Road Pricing and Public Transit: The “Virtuous Cycle”

[Congestion pricing] would speed trips for bus riders and make each bus less expensive to operate. Right now, when MTA buses are stuck idling in traffic, we must spend money on excess fuel and overtime for drivers. By decongesting the streets not just in Manhattan but throughout the city, as commuters from all the boroughs leave their cars at home congestion pricing would make travel times for bus riders faster. That leads to a virtuous cycle. As traffic is reduced, buses become faster. Faster buses attract more riders out of their cars, which reduces traffic further.

In removing many of the cars that block buses, and by making it easier to reprogram car lanes into bus lanes (such as the new bus lanes proposed for the Queensboro and Williamsburg bridges), the bus boosting benefits of congestion pricing will be felt immediately. What's more, speedier buses, as in London [pdf], will set off a "virtuous cycle" of less driving and more bus ridership leading to decreased bus operation costs per rider and in turn encouraging more service, lower fares, more bus riders and fewer drivers getting in their way.

Ridership goes up 31 percent and average user cost falls more than 100 percent of the initial fare. Fares can bereduced 26 percent, despite a 21 percent increase in service whose fares cover less than average cost; these reduced fares are possible because of higher bus occupancy (due to patronage rising faster than vehicle-miles) and lower driver costs (due to faster trips).